Street Fair with OMD-12mm

Legend

For those of you who don't also hang out at MU-43 (where this is also posted):

I live in a small town that is very rarely busy enough for me to feel comfortable committing street photography here. But about a half dozen or so times per year, there is some sort of event in town that brings hordes of people into town, the streets are closed to automobiles, and it becomes a street photography paradise. Yesterday was our annual "restaurant festival" and it was more crowded than I've ever seen it.

This is a relatively upbeat type of street photography - these are happy events, family events, and there's not much, if any, social commentary or documentation of social ills in the shots I do at these events. But I'm always going for human interaction and there's a ton of it to see. I often take a couple of cameras and switch around during the day for a change of pace, but yesterday I just shot with the OMD and 12mm lens all day. All with zone/manual focus, with the flip screen open and serving as a discrete shutter button - in manual focus mode, you just touch the screen ANYWHERE and the camera will fire. Focus at 5 feet, f8, vary the ISO as needed for the light to keep the shutter speed up. Here's a pretty good sampling. You can click through to my Flickr stream if you'd like to see more:

Regular

~@¿@~

Absolutely love this lot, Ray. My favourites, the first (nice capture of the relationship of woman to child) the girls at the sandwich stand (happy kids!) and the last... a sultry sullen boy, well caught!

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Veteran

Great series Ray and interesting to see how you set the camera up. Looks like a dream set-up that allows you to focus on the photography. Being able to use the screen to frame the shot and nail exposure must be a real positive over hip shooting? How quiet is the shutter on the OMD?

Legend

Great series Ray and interesting to see how you set the camera up. Looks like a dream set-up that allows you to focus on the photography. Being able to use the screen to frame the shot and nail exposure must be a real positive over hip shooting? How quiet is the shutter on the OMD?

First off, thanks to all for the nice comments - always appreciated...

Norman - I actually don't really use the screen to frame the shots all that much. I do on occasion, but I mostly just use it as a more discrete shutter button. When you're in manual/zone focus and have the touch-screen enabled, you can touch the screen ANYWHERE to trigger the shot and its instant. So I shoot from the belly/waist/hip like I usually do, and I often look away from the subject shortly before I take the shot. And by using the touch screen as a shutter release, you take the shot without having your hand anywhere near the shutter button and the whole operation is pretty discrete - allows you to get right up to people without giving your intentions away, like in that shot of the three young girls looking right past me to something going on behind me... In terms of the shutter, its the quietest yet of the m43 shutters - somewhat muffled because of the weather-sealing I think. But its not QUIET quiet - nowhere near the dead silence of the X100 or GRD or even the slightly audible GXR. But in most street situations, I don't find even lounder shutters to really be a problem - there's usually enough background noise...